Smash Notes

Back to Garry Tan — Building the world you want to live in, with Garry Tan.

What Was Garry Tan's $200m Mistake

Garry shares a story about how he turned down the opportunity to start a company with his friends and Peter Thiel to stay at Microsoft and how that mistake cost him $200M.

Transcript

Garry Tan — Building the world you want to live in ·

Paradox Podcast

More from this episode

  1. How Are We Doing in Battle Against COVID19Garry talks about how we should remember how our institutions reacted to the pandemic and how society's that respect science like South Korea and Taiwan but…
  2. What the "fifth Estate"Garry talks about what he and his partner Alexis refer to as the "fifth estate" or the rise of citizen journalism powered by the Internet to get better…
  3. How Is Initialized Capital StructuredGarry talks about Initialized's remote-first set up and software enabled voting.
  4. How Did Computers Change Garry Tan's Childhood in Fremont?Garry Tan grew up in Fremont as a child of immigrants. His father struggled with alcoholism and later got sick from it.
  5. What Does Garry Tan Miss About Being a Founder at Posterous?Kyle Tibbitts introduces Garry Tan as an early employee at Palantir and the founder of Posterous, the company Twitter acquired.
  6. How Did Immigrant Parents Shape Garry Tan's View of the World?Garry Tan says both sides of his family spent the twentieth century getting out.
  7. How Does Garry Tan Say Founders Should Use Chris Dixon's Idea Maze?Garry Tan points founders to Chris Dixon's essay on the idea maze. Dixon was an angel investor in Tan's 2008 startup. Tan describes the maze as a tournament.
  8. How Has Fatherhood Changed the Way Garry Tan Works?Garry Tan says nobody understands parenthood until it happens to them.
  9. Why Did Garry Tan Start YouTube After Casey Neistat?Garry Tan started his YouTube videos after he met Casey Neistat in person. He and his cofounder Alexis were already fans of Neistat's channel.
  10. Does Kyle Still Believe "learning" Is the Most Important CompensationKyle talks about a blog post he wrote in 2014 about a "high rate of learning" being the highest form of compensation at a startup and whether he still…
  11. What Does Garry Tan Believe About Talent That Most Investors Do Not?Asked for a belief most people do not share, a cousin of Peter Thiel's interview question, Garry Tan rejects the idea that too much capital is chasing too few…
  12. What Advice Did Garry Tan Get at Sixteen From a San Francisco Agency Founder?The best advice Garry Tan remembers came at sixteen, interning at an early digital agency in San Francisco.

People

More answers like this

More with Garry Tan

Related episodes

Plays from this note through the rest of the episode.

Note

Weekly highlights

One letter a week.

The notes worth hearing, with the minute they were said.